


Red Rain Boots

by nobraincells_onlyjasontodd



Series: FTT Side Stories [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman Beyond, Huntress (Comics)
Genre: 5+1 Things, 5+2 things, Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, Earth-1, Earth-2, FTT side story, Five Times, Gen, Helena Wayne becoming the Huntress, Helena Wayne-centric, Introspection, Metaphor-Heavy, Sad with a Happy Ending, Sort Of, also I guess mild gore but not really, also that major character death is in an alternate universe, can you tell I project onto her heavily, it's mentioned though, jk I did edit this but it's un-beta'd so if you see errors feel free to comment and I'll fix it, no editing we die like robins, so don't panic, the batman beyond bit is maybe for five seconds but it's relevant I swear, uh oh Trauma Time TM, universe-hopping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:21:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23788486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nobraincells_onlyjasontodd/pseuds/nobraincells_onlyjasontodd
Summary: Helena misses the people she somehow still has. Sort of a 5+1, except it’s a 5+2.
Relationships: Selina Kyle/Bruce Wayne (mentioned)
Series: FTT Side Stories [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1713796
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	Red Rain Boots

**Author's Note:**

> Helena misses the people she somehow still has. For context, this takes place in the FTT au which you can find the details of on my Tumblr (listed in the end notes). Basically, Helena Wayne came to Earth One after E2 Darksied blew up a whole universe, and now she lives with the Earth One Batfamily.

1\. Helena misses her mom.  
It’s weird, seeing Selina.  
Helena knows Selina Kyle is not Selina Wayne, not her mother. She knows this isn’t the woman who raised her, held her when she cried, taught her how to fight, showed her how to be a hero. She knows that this Selina never reformed, is still a criminal. Still somewhere between ecoterrorist and jewel thief. Helena knows that this Selina has a lot of growing to do.  
Helena knows that her mother will always love her father.  
Selina isn’t her mom, but she’s so much like her it hurts. She still smiles in that funny, crooked way whenever Bruce says something ridiculous. She still loves all the Robins like they were her children, even though they aren’t her children. She still looks after every single stray cat that she comes across.  
Helena thinks she’d make a great mother.  
Once upon a time, Selina Kyle married Bruce Wayne after a series of heroic deeds to redeem herself in the eyes of the law. She bravely stood and said “no,” no to injustice, no to hatred, no to her inner demons. Once upon a time Selina Wayne cared for a little girl and chased her around the halls of a great sunlit manor, only for the baby Helena to be scooped up in the arms of her father, and the three of them would laugh and run around some more. Eventually, Selina would protest when Helena wanted to change from red rain boots to a yellow cape and move the running from halls to rooftops, but she allowed it. Once upon a time Selina was a mother.  
Selina Wayne died in the arms of her daughter. She’s one with the ashes now. Selina Kyle is just beginning. Helena knows this.  
Right now, Helena is Robin, crying in the arms of someone who isn’t her mother, and she can’t even explain to Selina why she’s upset.

2\. Helena misses her Father.  
Bruce was already a father when she came the first time.  
In her world, Richard Grayson had died with his parents and Jason Todd was never born. In this one, they were her. In this one she accidentally stumbled into the universal back door and saw someone else in her colors. She was eleven years old and confused as hell when the Boom Tube had gone off, throwing her into a strange new world. Her father was not married to her mother. She did not exist. In this world, things were incredibly different yet somehow the same. Batman was still grumpy. His kids were still excitable, Alfred was still a mother hen to a child he had just met. She cried when she went home, because she knew she’d miss having brothers.  
Helena cried when she came back.  
Batman’s throat was slit by Darksied right in front of her. Her mother died in her arms. She was more grown up at fourteen, but shouldn’t have ever had to experience that. She grabbed Karen’s hand and ran for the Batcave, for the Boom Tube she knew was still there. She escaped. She was lucky. Dicky and Jay were still there, and they carried the ash-covered Robin to her not-Father. She curled into him and cried. That’s all she did for a while, because every time she saw his face all she could see was blood running down it.  
When she was escaping, she managed to grab some old photographs of her family laughing in the sunshine. When she felt better, she showed them to Bruce.  
Right now, Helena isn’t sure if she loves or hates Bruce for promising to try to be a father to her.

3\. Helena misses Karen.  
Helena doesn’t know why she’d miss someone who was very clearly alive.  
Karen was her childhood best friend. Karen was her first crush. Karen was her first kiss. Karen was her first love. Karen was the girl who snuck out at night all the way from Metropolis to steal Helena away from the manor and whisk her to the countryside to go flying up high where no one else could see. Karen was someone Helena almost lost to Darksied. Karen was the hand she grabbed when she fled their universe, Karen was the one who stayed with her through the hard nights. Karen was shocked when she realized her cousin was still alive here, and that there was another her. Karen was the moon to Helena’s sun.  
Helena sees Karen weekly, so there’s no reason to miss her.  
But she still does. But she and Karen have drifted apart somewhat, because now Karen is Powergirl and not Supergirl anymore, and Helena tries to fit in as Robin even though this earth already has one, yet she can’t move on. But Helena still wants to reach out to her and say “I love you” every day. But Karen reminds Helena of a time when the good guys always won and the world was colorful and the sky was tinted gold, before everything burned red and turned to ash. But, just maybe, that’s really why Helena misses her.  
Karen represents happier times that were stolen away. Karen makes Helena nostalgic.  
Right now Helena wonders if she whispered “Kara Zor-El” to the sky, if Karen would hear her and sweep her off her feet again.

4\. Helena misses her friends.  
Admittedly their team name was a lot dumber than “Titans.” They were called the “Junior Justice Society,” but the name was irrelevant. The people were who mattered. Karen, Courtney, Jesse, Ted, and others that came and went. Some of them joined the JSA later on, some became their own heroes. Some of them stayed. All of them died.  
Now, no one is the same.  
Jesse Quick doesn’t exist. Stargirl is a normal civilian, Ted is an old man, and Karen is trying to find where she fits in with Kal and Kon and Kara. Helena doesn’t exist. Helena is a remnant of something that never was. A long time ago, Courtney insisted on having rings like the JSA had. Helena still has hers, their logo of the sun and three arrows lovingly carved into the metal. Helena lived to remember the pain of loss, even though Jesse and Ted would try to cheer her up if they were here and Karen would kiss her and tell her everything would be alright.  
Helena had friends there that she can’t tell her friends here about. Sometimes, she looks at them, and silently asks them if they remember her.  
Right now Helena doesn’t know if her world was actually that wonderful, or if she’s just remembering fondly what she has lost.

5\. Helena misses herself.  
Helena knows she’s different now.  
When Helena was little, before Robin, she wore red rain boots everyday regardless of the weather. When Helena was eight, she traded rain boots for batarangs and a sense of justice. When she was thirteen, Robin got pants and Helena got upgrades. When it was her fifteenth birthday, her world burned. When the sky rained destruction down and her friends were the first to die, when Parademons swarmed the masses and slaughtered her parents, when she ran away, she wore red everything, ashes clinging to bloodied skin as she held Karen tight and white light carried her to safety. When a regular person goes through that kind of trauma, it sticks. When a Bat goes through it, it never leaves.  
Helena doesn’t know if she’ll survive.  
Constantly reminded by the familiar faces, Helena wants to let them in, but they are strangers, living and breathing parodies of distant memories. Helena was once a little kid, untouched by horror. She was once a bird who danced across the daylight and laughed before swinging tiny fists into nighttime menaces. She was once clear, pure, yellow, beautiful sunlight. Now, she’s made of the hazy red blur of fires that are just out of sight, consuming the atmosphere and filling your lungs with smoke. Now her wings are clipped and her bones are blood and her skin is paper-thin ashes, pressed on to her in the likeness of a face.  
Helena isn’t a child anymore, that was taken from her. Helena did have a childhood, tinted gold and bittersweet.  
Right now, Helena doesn’t know who she is, and is scared of what she might become.

+1. The kids might just be alright.  
Helena is turning nineteen, and Tim got her red rain boots.  
She doesn’t know how he knew (she suspects Selina though), and she doesn’t really care- she just hugs him tight and says thank you. It’s been four years, and Helena has rebuilt herself here. Robin is a title that never belonged to her in this world, and she was glad to se it go to Tim and Stephanie and Damian. She is Huntress, and the name isn’t an empty one. Like a bird pf prey, she’s tough as nails. Like birds of myth, she carries the sun with her, inside her. The ashes on her face peeled off over time, revealing dark hair and the echo of a smile beneath. She may not be the sunshine child her mother used to call her, but maybe she’s becoming the one Selina and Bruce like to call her now.  
Helena is happy, finally.  
Some nights are better than others. Helena doesn’t like to sleep alone. On good nights, she’ll stay up with Cass and Steph and Barbara and marathon movies and fall asleep on the couch. On mediocre ones, She’ll stay up with her brothers and might not sleep at all, since Tm keeps the coffee coming and Dicky, Jay, and Damian are entertainment enough. On the worst ones, she’ll go to Selina and Bruce, who she’s beginning to think of as “Mom” and “Dad” and just sit with them, waiting for something that’s never coming. But tonight, Helena isn’t playing vigilante. She’s out on the town all night until a rainy Gotham sunrise, wearing red rain boots and an oversized yellow coat and splashing around like a little kid again.

+2. “Who’s the new kid?”  
Helena is 45 and sometimes forgets she wasn’t originally from here.  
This earth avoided her fate. This Earth lived a long time, will continue to live. This Earth knows her as “that Wayne kid from Earth Two,” since the Exodus was a well documented event, a global spilling of doppelgänger refugees along with the public reveal of the multiverse. But the gossip died out years ago, when Bruce made the shift from playboy to father to grumpy old man in the public eye. This Earth has almost forgotten its heroes, and the crime rate of Neo Gotham has skyrocketed since Bruce retired. She still doesn’t know why. She doubts he’ll ever tell her. But this Earth still needs a Batman.  
Helena likes Terry McGinnis. He’s like a breath of fresh air in the polluted Gotham cityscape.  
Terry is so much like the others. Stealing the tires? Ha, try stealing the Batsuit, eat your heart out Jason Todd. But none of the kids really would have made a good Batman, as much as they like think they would have. But Terry is different. “I can handle Batman,” he says, “I can handle the darkness.” Helena thinks it’s not really about darkness. “You make a good Batman,” she tells him, “because you help Gotham remember that after the night the sun will always rise.” Terry likes Helena too. She suggests he wear red boots. He doesn’t really get it.  
Bruce does. Helena does. And somewhere inside her...  
The little girl in red boots fades into the sunshine.

**Author's Note:**

> have questions about this au? send me an ask on tumblr @jtodd-whomst


End file.
